Not wanting to push my luck, Piper joined me at work. She loves to be in the youth room. She hops from couch to couch, finds bugs, eats them, and brings them to me, and she has a special place where she likes to sleep. It didn't take much longer to finish the trees, look over my lesson, and get a few other things in order. It was just about dinner time for the puppy anyways. So we got home, I fed the dog, let her out, played with her, and then started cooking my dinner. Then it happened.
Wanting to throw something away, I moved the recycle bin back to floor so I could get at the garbage can. Well apparently in doing so, the fire extinguisher hanging on the wall was bumped and jumped off, right down onto the top of my foot. My immediate thought was, "oh crap, it's broken... now I'm gonna have to sit at the ER all by myself which is going to take forever!!" A bit dramatic, I know.
This was the absolute LAST thing I wanted to deal with after a very challenging week. In that simple action, it became exceedingly obvious that satan was going to do everything he could in order to stop youth group from taking place. Sitting in the middle of the kitchen floor, super annoyed and feeling a bit defeated, I said aloud, "Youth group is going to happen!! In the name of Jesus, it's going to happen. You don't win." So not only did I look ridiculous because I was sitting in the middle of the floor, but I also looked nuts because I was seemingly talking to myself. On top of that, Piper was all up in my grill because she obviously knew I was hurting.
My next move was to get some prayer warriors on it. I called Trent, in Indiana and simply asked for prayer. He said he'd pray and get others on it too. Next I just decided that life needed to go on. I wasn't going to sit in the ER on a Saturday night alone, so I finished cooking dinner. Just before I finished cooking a church member called about something completely unrelated. We chatted for a few and then I asked her to pray. She offered to go to the hospital with me, but I refused and instead went over and watched a movie with her. It was swollen and bruised but the pain was manageable, so I figured life would go on.
The next day, Sunday was booked solid for me. I was at church by 7:45am and was only home for about an hour during the day before finally getting home at 9 last night. After that long of a day my foot was not happy. I had been told by numerous people that I should really go get it an x-ray. I wouldn't have agreed to go at all if my mom hadn't pointed out that I had a broken bone in my foot that I ignored my freshman year of high school... I later had to have surgery on my foot to repair the damage. That recovery was the big suck, so this morning when I woke up I decided I'd go have it looked at (although it really didn't look that bad to me today).
The end result? A "deep bone bruise." The doctor gave me this ridiculous looking shoe thing to help keep weight off of it... it was that or use a cain. I may be getting old, but I'm NOT using a cain for a bruise! How silly. When I got home the shoe was off within about an hour. It's too big and it looks so dramatic for something so small. I googled bone bruises and learned that they might feel like fractures and take a long time to heal properly. Duh. The doc said I had to wear the shoe thing for at least a week, but he definitely made it seem like that was just for my own comfort. I was also told to rest, no sports or exercise. Um, yeah right. I have a 5 month old puppy who drives me nuts if she doesn't get energy out on a walk.
So, on our walk tonight (wearing normal shoes, I might add) I began to feel the repercussions of my choices... quite a bit of pain throbbing through my foot. My foot may be sore, but I refuse to stop life because of it.
This past week, I was beaten up. I was bruised badly by the evil one through a few different sources and situations. There were so many times when I just wanted to lay down and admit defeat. It reminded me a lot of the last year I spent in Africa. As you know, I was sick or injured in some way almost the entire year that I was gone. It gets old, very quickly. How discouraging, right? However, God sustained me last year. I was never so badly beaten that I couldn't move forward in ministry. His strength sustains. My joy can't be stolen, Jesus has won, once and for ALL. How beautiful that the Holy Spirit battles on our behalf! Thank you, God.
I'll leave you with 2 short passages that have encouraged me lately.
"And the Holy Spirit helps us in our weakness. For example, we don’t know what God wants us to pray for. But the Holy Spirit prays for us with groanings that cannot be expressed in words.And the Father who knows all hearts knows what the Spirit is saying, for the Spirit pleads for us believers in harmony with God’s own will. And we know that God causes everything to work together for the good of those who love God and are called according to his purpose for them." Romans 8:26-28
"We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.
We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies." 2 Corinthians 4:7-10
"We now have this light shining in our hearts, but we ourselves are like fragile clay jars containing this great treasure. This makes it clear that our great power is from God, not from ourselves.
We are pressed on every side by troubles, but we are not crushed. We are perplexed, but not driven to despair. We are hunted down, but never abandoned by God. We get knocked down, but we are not destroyed. Through suffering, our bodies continue to share in the death of Jesus so that the life of Jesus may also be seen in our bodies." 2 Corinthians 4:7-10
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